"Vacuum cleaner. Vacuum cleaner!!"

Last Wednesday or maybe Thursday night, I am lying in bed trying to sleep, still bitterly angry at my neighbors for their incessant singing which has undermined my recuperation efforts for two days straight, and utterly exhausted from influence of the illness and lack of sleep.

It is well past midnight, and their radio or their voices have been interchangeably blaring-loud for several hours. There are two male voices and one female voice, and I can hear them move from the bedroom to the living room, back and forth. One moment, the radio is on at a volume so loud I am SURE that Prince himself is singing "Purple Rain" in their living room; followed by the guitar-playing efforts of the American Idol hopeful.

Normally, I am not one to put up with this nonsense. At the stroke of 9:02 - two minutes into my building's "quiet hours" - I will don my large white bathrobe and knock upon the door of the errant neighbor with a hazy, sleep-filled look in my eye, and ask them to please Shut-The-Fuck-Up. But by this point, after two days of feverish nightmares, I am SO EXHAUSTED that it takes all the energy I can muster to merely roll over to see what hour the clock cruelly blinks in my face. So exhausted, to the point of delirium from sleep deprivation, that I cannot be certain I am not HALLUCINATING the rainy purple nightmare radiating from below my floor. Clearly, none of my other neighbors are hearing it, or they would SURELY have delivered the STFU message by now.

Sometime after 1:00am, I am Fed Up. I find my robe and slippers, and head downstairs to nip this racket in the bud. Their windows are open, but the blinds are closed. Every light inside is blazing.

ding-dong, the doorbell politely chimes.

Through the open window, I can hear them as clearly as if they were standing next to me. They are no more than a few feet away.

"Oh, Shit," Guy Number One exclaims, "Shit!" The radio is immediately turned WAY down, and I hear rustling from within. The girl is stifling giggles.

Guy Number Two exclaims, "Vacuum cleaner. Vacuum cleaner!!"

There is a brief pause, as though they are listening to hear if I have gone away. I ring the bell again.

"Neighbors," says Guy Number One, "It's just neighbors."

The door opens, just a crack, and Guy Number One's face is peeking out at me through the security screen. Before I can breathe a word of complaint, he immediately spews a long string of apologies. He is very obviously higher than a kite. I simply nod angrily and head back upstairs, where it is now quiet enough to sleep.

And so the saga of my insane neighbors continues.